To establish a rat model of acutepulmonaryembolism (APE) through interventional technique and to observe the changes of mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) following inhibition of CD147 in APE models.

The APE model was induced by catheterization and intravenous injection of Sephadex G-50 microspheres through femoral vein in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Forty-eight rats were randomly assigned to sham, sham + anti-CD147, APE, and APE + anti-CD147 groups. mPAP was measured at 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 minutes after APE induction in 6 animals in each group. For the other 6 rats in each group, mPAP was measured 24 h after APE and these animals were sacrificed to detect the level of TNF-α and IL-6 in plasma, the myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and the expression of CD147 in lung tissue.

The technical success rate of modeling was 100% and the mortality rate of modeling rats was 22.6%. Compared with the Sham group, the mPAP in the APE group increased significantly within one hour and at 24 hours after embolism (P < 0.01); the TNF-α and IL-6 levels in plasma, the MPO activity and the expression of CD147 in the lung tissue also increased significantly (P < 0.01). The anti-CD147 intervention attenuated APE-induced increases in mPAP at 50 minutes, 60 minutes and 24 hours and this effect was associated with reduced neutrophil infiltration and decreased levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in plasma.

We established an easily reproducible rat model of APE with interventional technique and preliminarily confirmed that CD147 was involved in the increase of pulmonary arterial pressure after APE by promoting inflammation.